Category: Cool People

Another Great Development Vid

February 22, 2011
Cool PeopleGame DesignGame Programming
1 Comment

Again, these things simultaneously delight and depress me.

This is three guys from Cryptic Studios (two programmers and one artist) making a game in about 28 total hours (not counting sleep time) for the 2011 Global Game Jam (which I guess is as close to my Iron Gamedev dream as I’m going to get).

Now, it’s really unfair to compare myself to these guys. They were using a very well-designed framework (Game Library of Victory, which you can actually download here). There were three of them and one of me.

But still…look at them pump that stuff out! I’m starting to feel like I’m doing something wrong. It seems like it’s so much harder for me and takes so much longer than it does for many other people. Maybe my framework just sucks.

Happy First Birthday, CRPG Addict!

February 17, 2011
Cool People
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The CRPG Addict, who turned his inability to stop playing RPGs when he “grew up” into an absolutely fantastic blog, is one year old today!

Actually, it’s his blog that’s a year old. I think he’s in his mid-thirties or so. He divulges surprisingly little personal information; indeed, all I know about the man is that he loves himself New Orleans and a vodka gimlet.

ANYhoo, head on over and check out the holiday celebrations, and if you haven’t been reading his blog, please start. It’s the best one I’ve found in ages.

Inaria! (Sung to the tune of SEGA!)

January 19, 2011
Cool PeopleInaria
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The good news: Inaria got a mention in Jay Barnson’s roundup of upcoming indie RPGs! Welcome to everyone who is visiting this site because of his mention!

The bad news: It’s the worst-looking game there.

I don’t know what to do about how Inaria looks. The free sprites I found are nice and colorful, looking like 256-color VGA art. On the other hand…that amount of detail makes my own stuff look like ass. As if to emphasize the point, I followed a link from a commenter (DIntent) back to his blog (The Lame Brain) and found out about another blog called Tilting at Windmills.

(Before I go on, I just want to say thanks to DIntent for the kind things he said about me on his blog. He’s writing an old-school RPG too, called SPARK. Check it out.)

But Tilting at Windmills is a blog written by a guy who writes games for…the TI-99/4A. And his biggest project so far is an RPG. (If you don’t want to follow that link to find out what a TI-99/4A is, it’s a vintage computer about as powerful as the Apple II, made by Texas Instruments.)

Check the screenshots out on this page. If they don’t give you the warm fuzzies, then you either hate classic RPGs or you HAVE NO SOUL, and I’m betting the latter. He did all the graphics himself, and just like Daniel Remar, the self-imposed limitations made it possible for him to do them himself effectively.

Perhaps I should do the same? This would also allow me to add some limited animation on the characters (right now there is none because that’s not how the sprites were designed).

Sticking with graphics, I also recently resized the main screen up from 512×384 to 640×480. I did this because I wanted to expand the visible tiles in the world window from 9×9 to 11×11. I originally did this to support 11×11 “arena” maps where combats take place (just like in Ultimas III, IV and V).

But now that I’ve added that feature, I’m at the crossroads. Single or multi-character? My dungeons are now just underground maps filled with NPCs and items; there’s only one “puzzle” and that’s in how the dungeon is laid out.

I think what I need is more special tiles. Hidden doors, triggers, traps, teleporters…I need all these and more especially if I stick with a single-player game.

So I think that’s what I’ll work on next, along with the graphics. Don’t be surprised if the next version of Inaria looks radically different.

Rest In Peace, Major Winters.

January 10, 2011
Cool PeopleUncategorized
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PSRD Breach. Yadda yadda.

On January 2nd, Major Richard “Dick” Winters passed away at the age of 93.

If you’ve read the book Band of Brothers by Stephen Ambrose or seen the associated (excellent) HBO-produced miniseries, then you know exactly who this man was. He was the leader of Easy Company, whose exploits in World War II are now legendary. After getting his men through training from a near-psychotic drill sergeant, Winters went on to personally lead Easy Company through their paradrop on D-Day, their advance through France, the spectacular failure of Operation Market Garden and the Battle of the Bulge. He led from the front until his superiors ordered him to the rear, considering him too valuable to place on the front lines. He led them as they entered Germany, found Nazi concentration camps and finally stormed the (then empty) Eagle’s Nest.

Once the European campaign was over, he even volunteered to fight in the Pacific, believing that doing so would end the war faster and thus get his boys home quicker. His request was denied; his superiors telling him that he had done enough.

But the end of World War II wasn’t the end of his military career. He was called back into service during the Korean War. He was assigned to train new officers, but this was a different army than the one he encountered in World War II – he found the officers undisciplined, sometimes even failing to show up for his classes. Finally, on the verge of his deployment to Korea, he was allowed to resign.

This post actually has a video game angle. Seriously, it does. For the most famous statement Winters made after the war was, “I was not a hero. But I served in the company of heroes.”

Rest in peace, Major Winters. And I hope one day that someone like Mr. Ambrose (who is sadly deceased) will chronicle the heroism of the soldiers who currently fight in Afghanistan and Iraq.

A Welcome Return!

August 3, 2010
Cool People
5 Comments

There was this guy, see. He went by the handle Arkiruthis, and he was going to do a remake of Powermonger. He had a blog and everything, and some excellent screen shots and video. This got me really excited, and I did some work to help him out.

Then real life intruded and his blog went defunct. And I was sad.

But now he’s back, baby! Tanned, rested, and ready for another go-round! And you can see what he’s doing here.

Now, I have to reveal that one of the reasons he became disinterested in the project was because he got some flak from people when he revealed he was going to update the game rather than do a “straight” remake. Most of those people found out about his project from the Retro Remakes forums…because I posted about it there.

So, I’m sorry Nick if I brought unwanted pressure upon your project and maybe gave it more exposure than you were ready for at the time.

Elemental: War of Magic in a nutshell.

June 3, 2010
Cool PeopleGames
1 Comment

Brad has taken to calling Elemental a game where you play, not as an adventurer in a fantasy role-playing game, but as the king who has to (among other things) clean up the messes the adventurers leave behind. A-like so:

If your interest is piqued, join us over at elementalgame.com!

More on Hero Core

May 14, 2010
Cool PeopleGame DesignGames
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I’m going to talk about Hero Core a little more. Because I wanna.

There’s a lot to like about Hero Core. It may be the most perfect one-man band game I’ve ever played (although technically it’s two men because the music was done by Brother Android). It’s a perfect study in overcoming the limits of your own abilities to produce greatness.

Can’t do great art? Design your game so that you don’t have to. Hero Core runs in 320×240 and is in black and white (not monochrome, mind you – black and white are the only two colors used). Almost everything that moves is a particle of some kind, and they are almost all made of simple geometric shapes. The actual levels are made up of square tiles – no attempt to soften or round them was made. The main character doesn’t even have any frames of animation! While the word “retro” is horribly overworked, this game literally looks like it was made in the mid- to late-Eighties for the ZX Spectrum. Practically anyone can do art at this level, and it’s effective. Contrast this with Daniel’s previous game Iji, where the art is by far the weakest part of the game because Daniel isn’t that great at drawing and animating humanoid figures.

The game’s design strikes a perfect balance between challenge and accessibility. Death has practically no sting – all that happens is get warped back to your last save point. And these save points are everywhere, fully refill your health when you use them and allow you to teleport between them. That last bit is the really brilliant part – Daniel Remar has made a Metroidvania that doesn’t have any tedious backtracking in it.

The end result is that Daniel can make the individual rooms (or a sequence of rooms) difficult without making the game frustrating, since all you have to do is make it to the next save point – or teleport elsewhere if you really think you’re not ready yet. And while it’s not quite NES hard, it gets very challenging towards the end and veers into bullet hell territory on the higher difficulties. But practically anyone can finish the game because you don’t need an impossible level of skill; you just need a moderate level of skill and some perseverance. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again – allow the player to trade time for skill.

So, to sum up, great design, effective art, excellent music and it didn’t take him four years this time. Bravo, Daniel. Bravo.

Hero Core

May 8, 2010
Cool PeopleGamesZeta
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Okay, this isn’t Zeta, but it’s got a lot of the feel that I would have been going for with Zeta. And it’s darn fun, so you should try it out. It’s called Hero Core.

It’s done by Daniel Remar of Remar Games, who also did the excellent Iji.

I’m not doing anything cool, but my friends are.

April 14, 2010
Cool PeopleFriends
5 Comments

First, the incomparable Jari Komppa has an article in the April 2010 issue of Game Developer Magazine detailing how he went about porting a DOS game – Remedy’s classic Death Rally – to Windows. No DOSBox, a straight code port. Very interesting to see how things have changed and how some things worked his way and some didn’t.

Oh, and if you’re just interested in a free game, you can download the new Death Rally for free at Remedy’s website.

Meanwhile, back at The Ranch, the even more incomparable Fat Man is gearing up to start offering classes in music composition for games at all levels of expertise. If you’ve got ANY interest in composing music for games (or for composing music at all) then even one session with him could be an incredible boost to your career.

As for me…still making Elemental, which is cool, but I can’t talk about it. Which is poopy. And Elemental is taking up so much of my time that I just don’t feel like coding anything else when I get home. I’m sure this will change though.

Promises, Promises

February 3, 2010
Cool PeopleGames
2 Comments

Okay, I know I promised a whole bunch of stuff that would revitalize this blog and I’ve delivered exactly jack and squat. But there’s reasons! Really!

First, while I wouldn’t say we’re in crunch mode on Elemental, we are working very intently. And the interesting thing is that we’re not working intently to make some publisher happy so that they’ll keep the money drip going. We’re working intently to make our beta testers happy. The current beta (1G) actually has the potential to be – wait for it – fun. It’ll be a nice reward to everyone who stuck with us through the first few betas, which were so un-fun that we felt the need to actually put a warning on the splash screen.

Second, I lost my video card. Well, that’s not really true. I know exactly where it is…it’s in my wife’s computer, since hers flaked out thirty minutes before a raid. I could try to get it back, but I’d probably lose a hand in the process.

So I’m stuck on internal video, which is not conducive to video capture and/or…anything really. The best game I’ve been able to get running on it is Morrowind, and even that is pretty choppy. Hopefully our finances will loosen up towards the middle of the month and I’ll be able to return to the land of the 3D-accelerated.

In the meantime, I’ve found something to keep you occupied. First, GetDaved, who not only has a great YouTube handle but is also one of the best LPers out there now that DeceasedCrab is semi-retired, is currently playing through Galactic Civilizations 2. He did an excellent playthrough of Master of Orion and two (count them, two!) playthroughs of Master of Orion 2, but when he was asked to play Master of Orion 3 he refused, saying he didn’t find that game fun. So he’s playing GalCiv2 instead. Good for him!

We will resume our regularly scheduled programming soon.

I promise.

Again.